Dizraeli - "Million Miles" (stream / video)

Dizraeli’s new track (with his band, the Small Gods), takes a breather from his usual frenetic political diatribes, slowing down his trademark spit-fire delivery in favour of a more meditative approach. Opening with a flush of baroque strings, “Million Miles” explores a moody soundscape of nocturnal paranoia and fever-dreamed eroticism. Over a rhythm built equally of hip-hop sampling and jazz riffing, Dizraeli levels rhymes of sex and death amidst a haunted wash of ghostly vocals floating in the musical ether above the groove. It’s a new direction for the artist who opted for slams and jams on his previous outing, Engurland (City Shanties), injecting his arty, rough-hewn brand of hip-hop with a coarser blend of live instrumentation. It’s like an emotional apocalypse of sound and poetry.

Imran Khan is a writer who lives in Canada. In addition to PopMatters, he has also written for other publications like Inside Entertainment, aRUDE and The Toronto Quarterly.